Fidelity is building a crypto exchange: is it hacker bait?

Today, Business Insider broke news of multi-trillion dollar asset manager Fidelity planning its big move into cryptocurrency trading by setting up an exchange.

The move makes Fidelity one of an ever-increasing number of financial industry entities looking to increase direct interaction with cryptocurrency.

A particularly cheeky and creative CEO of a blockchain cybersecuriy firm issued a press release, advancing the claim that this move turns Fidelity into hacker bait.

Yo Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Hosho, said in the press release:

“While it’s great that a company like Fidelity is moving towards blockchain and digital asset adoption, the risk factors associated with the move are that much greater. Fidelity will potentially introduce a large number of users onto its exchange, which by extension, means a large amount of assets being moved around. Fidelity could expose themselves as hacker bait — the greater the bait, the more motivated hackers will be to get inside.”

In essence, the reasons behind Kwon’s claim of Fidelity being hacker bait are 1) large number of users Fidelity will bring on board, and 2) the volume of assets.

These two generic reasons could practically be applied to any big cryptocurrency exchange, which leads one to wonder why Kwon put out such a press release targeted at Fidelity. But Kwon’s motivations soon became clear.

Kwon rather unabashedly added, “To preemptively avoid being hacked, Fidelity should partner with a third-party source capable of understanding the complexities that come with digital asset exchanges.

“In its move into cryptocurrency trading, Nasdaq brought Gemini onboard to help increase oversight on fraud and manipulation.

“I’d be surprised if Fidelity didn’t follow suit or, at the very least, take on advisors who have a proven track record of working with cryptocurrency exchanges.”

Is this a smart way for a nascent startup to catch a potential big client’s attention? Or is this just pure cringe-worthy material?